Friday, January 31, 2014

As if there is not enough violence in the world, we have this ongoing violence in Nigeria for a long time now. As you know Nigeria is the largest country in Africa with the second biggest economy due to oil production. But its population has a toxic mix of several ethnic communities and also equally divided into Muslim and Christian religions. And because of this, there has always been violence sometimes on a grand scale but mostly on a smaller one. But with the introduction of an extremist group called "Boko Haram" roughly translated into western education is forbidden, the violence has reached to high levels. It has attacked not only government forces but people within its own Muslim religion whom they think are not "Islamists enough" (whatever that means) and despite all the counter offensive against them by government forces, they keep on hitting back on soft targets like schools or villages not entirely secured.
Although this extremist group thankfully have not extended their scope and violence beyond Nigeria and there are no reports out there suggesting that they have swear their allegiance to Al-Qaeda. But this can quickly change as Al-Qaeda seeks a foothold in the African Largest country and the Nigerian extremist group gaining international exposure through their allegiance to Al-Qaeda. My father was offered long time ago to head a bank branch in Lagos, the capital of Nigeria, but I told him to reject that transfer since I had read already about the violence happening there. Not to put a country in a negative light but the truth is violence keeps on rising in that country and unless the government reigns in the violence, it will just escalate and become internationalized.

Thursday, January 30, 2014

Now I am getting sick reading more than six hundred passengers getting sick recently on a cruise ship, which has now returned to its home base and the cleaning has begun. It was some sort of a virus and the cruise ship operator has offered fifty percent refund on the current cruises and fifty percent on the future one. Who will again go in their right mind on the next cruise is a good question to ask. But if someone says that it is just a onetime event and it does not happen always. That is true since many cruises depart every week but you only hear the ones that face with disaster, but even one news like this can make you think twice about going on a honeymoon or an excursion especially the ones who have already become sick in one of the cruises. I long time ago went on a cruise with my family from Boston to the northern parts of the U.S. and Canada.
At that time, we had the luck that the weather was perfect (with no rain or clouds to worry about) and smooth sailing all the way, so every time I hear about the cruise ship disasters, we thank our lucky stars that we did not encounter any. Although I along with my daughter enjoyed the most, but my wife does not even want to think about going on a cruise again. I would love to go a cruise but it makes me think twice over when I hear these kinds of reports and then imagine what it were me and my family on that ship and we are stuck. No thank you for now and for a few years until everything goes well and the Cruise industry takes precautions. Although I know that disaster can strike any time but there should be contingency plans in place the minute something like this happens. No excuses whatsoever since people have paid money to enjoy the cruise not to turn it to a nightmare.

Before I start, just for my readers internationally, Georgia is a state in the United States with Atlanta its biggest city. It is in what we call the Deep South and thus they have a hot climate even during the winter days. The winters are not as cold or harsh as they are in the Northern areas of the U.S. Thus the people living there and many of them being from the north to escape the harsh climate have made Atlanta their home, and they are not used to snow or cold weathers. Furthermore they have no transit system to take back millions of people in case of snow and don’t want to invest in it either. And it was about time that Mother Nature had a little fun with them. For us people living in the north, we chose (grudgingly) to have all four seasons all year long as our winters are harsh and summers sometimes hot but not very often.
And I can understand that there was the issue with ice but it is a big international city and how they dealt with is at times funny (for us people in the north) and at best tragic as thousands of people got stranded on the roads and hundreds of school kids had to spent time in their schools after regular school day because of this snow. I would not call it as a snow storm because merely three inches of it (in spite of ice) does not qualify itself to make a big city paralyzed and incapacitated for the whole day. Whatever excuses that are now pouring in for not preparing, it is still the fault of the government not to prepare its citizens in these times when most of the people don’t know how to cope with snow and ice. A new mass transit system is now in need for the city even if the people think that this will be once in a life time phenomena because you never know it might occur more frequently in the future, so better be prepared than to suffer again.

Wednesday, January 29, 2014

I wrote an article long time ago regarding a world out there besides the U.S. but due to our busy schedule and vastness of our country, we don’t feel that much connected to the outside world. And here I am again writing about it. As I work in the financial industry (AND NO, I DON’T MAKE MUCH MONEY, BUT I HAVE A JOB) and work with various countries around the world. I also wrote about how different cultures have different work ethics, which does not mean that they are lazy or don’t care but they work on their own schedule. It is just that there is not that much urgency on their part and this is what I keep on telling me that if we are in a hurry to do something and have done it as fast as possible, we should not expect other people outside the U.S. to work on our schedule.
And this the people working in time sensitive industries just forget. I have been to other countries and work there too and they are generally more relaxed and not in a hurry to do things. Although they take their time to do things but you never know what is holding up things in other places. Remember not everybody has the same laws as the U.S. and you need to be patient when dealing with overseas customers. Gentle reminders are fine but to be bullying and aggressive just because your customer in the U.S. wants to get the things done their way and on their time would not cut it in other countries and may even cause resentment. So if you are going to do business outside the U.S. you should be mindful and considerate of other people's culture and habits and way of doing work by doing some research or analysis so that you don’t get stressed out when it comes to time to dealing with them.

Hong Kong martial arts thriller, part one of a trilogy series about four detectives who investigate the spread of counterfeit coins in a small town. Although actions were plenty but it did not seems like the movie I would have liked as far as martial arts movies go, which have become pretty rare nowadays. Recommended with caution.

And who is going to decide which sect should be represented at the dialogue. What will be the composition of it and what topics to avoid among themselves. What are they really going to discuss with other religions and will they be able to accept or come to a conclusion with peace sprouting up around the world. And what if some of the sects from either side object to any terms and conditions, what will happen then. It is easy to say that we should have interfaith dialogue then to come to modalities of how the dialogue is to be conducted. Even the place where it is supposed to happen can be subject to controversy. As I said initially, the two major religions don’t agree with each other beliefs and then within each religion there are sects which do not agree with each other. How are they going to reconcile issues which have been there for thousands of years?
So before everybody jumps on this bandwagon of interfaith dialogue, try to find a common ground among your own faith so that everybody is on the same page and not make a fool out of themselves and stick with the major issues without going on into what one believe or not because if you don't then you are setting up yourself as a failure before even the start of the dialogue. Publicity regarding it is fine but the reality is very harsh and bitter. Because you will not agree to everything so it is imperative that there be a list of issues to discuss and what is not in agreement can be hampered out in the next meeting. Since religions have been in conflict for thousands of years so this kind of dialogue (if it ever happens) will have to take place over many years (maybe hundreds of thousands) and not happening in any of our lifetimes.

Now the issue is where to start the dialogue/debate from, because both religions do not agree with each other before even if they start to talk. First the Christians believe that the Prophet of Islam was not a Prophet and never was and the Muslims don’t believe that Jesus Christ is a Son of God, so it is just a non starter to the whole dialogue/debate. How can you have a dialogue/debate when each party refuses to even acknowledge the most fundamental beliefs of the respective religions? And before even we start on this path, we should have an interfaith dialogue/debate especially among Muslims because they are the most disorganized over certain aspects of Islam. Instead uniting on one front, they have their different versions of Islam and thus are unable to start any dialogue/debate among themselves what to talk about with other religions. If you start digging deeper into different Muslims sects, you will understand my point.
And it is easy to say that you want to have an interfaith dialogue than to see that what little understanding you have of your own religions with as many interpretations of it as there are sects (for the curious there are 73 sects in Islam with as many variations and interpretations of what really happened about 1400 years in Arabia). And if are unable to agree on a unified platform on things that you agree how can you expect other religions to understand you when you are also killing in the name of your religion other Muslims whom you think are not Muslim enough for you according to your own narrow interpretations of the religion.

You may have heard this thing again and again from certain religious quarters saying that it is essential to have interfaith dialogue to promote peace and harmony in the world. What is really an interfaith dialogue? It is essentially between the three main religions Judaism, Christianity and Islam that is really talked about but the dialogue is usually between Christianity and Islam that is the real issue. I don’t want to slight other religions like Hinduism, Sikhism, Buddhists or any other religion but when this term comes up it is usually the above two mentioned. And usually it is the Muslims who want to do it more than anybody else. Why do they do this, I suspect is that they are not concerned about other major religions but only Christianity (and Judaism) since they are in direct and overwhelmingly in conflict with them. And if you see around the world, it seems that way as the Christian are loggerheads with Muslims and Muslims blaming everything on the so called Christian crusade and Jewish conspiracies.
And to be fair, there have been many interfaith dialogues but the conflict goes on and there is very little understanding between the two of them. I am not against any kind of interfaith dialogue that will reduce violence if not entirely eliminate it from the world and it would be nice and a commendable effort if the two major religions come to some kind of understanding so that it will contribute to towards harmony and more understanding between the two (and then we can go on from there to other religions).

Tuesday, January 28, 2014

Four childhood friends who are now at an advance age decides to give one of their friends bachelor party in Las Vegas in this sometimes hilarious comedy drama with all the actors doing what they do best, acting. Recommended

The intense competition between two formula 1 race car drivers, James hunt and Niki Lauda and all the glamorous racing that accompany with their rivalry. Very vulgar but good drama. Recommended but not for kids

An aging Grandpa takes his grandson on a road trip to unite with his father and on their way meet different characters and play pranks on them. Hilarious but very raunchy and vulgar. Recommended but definitely not for kids.

Although I am thinking way ahead in this case but how the legalization of Pot impacts the daily life of people. Would they be allowed to keep it in their car and what is the limit like that in alcohol would trigger the Driving while under the influence laws. Would someone be allowed to bring marijuana to work and smoke during the work hours and how are you going to hire somebody who may have marijuana in his/her system because it may be legal but the company’s policy states otherwise. Would there be age limit to who can buy it and would it be allowed or disallowed in public places. How are you going to explain to your kids that a drug which was illegal not in the distant past is now legal and how are you going to say no to it when your kids may say that it is what their friends are doing and is perfectly legal (and supposedly harmless).
And where does it all end? Do we then graduate to other drugs like cocaine and heroin and declare them legal too. I have all these questions which may or may not arise while discussing this legalization because for now most of them seem farfetched but there is always a possibility that if the President of the United States have started to somewhat support it ( I am not saying that he supports it now but in the future) then where to do take a stand on illegal drugs or do we ever take a stand on anything then.

For the gay marriage, it took years to come to becoming legalized and it is not even in all states but with this marijuana it seems like it is going on a fast track with New Jersey thinking along the lines of Colorado. And by making it legal many people who love it have either moved there or go there occasionally to get their fix, not to mention the medicinal marijuana. I cannot say anything about medicinal marijuana people since I don’t know how their loved ones are in pain and how it helps but for recreational reasons to make marijuana legal I am not for it. Although making it legal will make the job of law enforcement much easier and put less burden on our legal system but would all the states follow it through and how it is to be ensured that only marijuana is to be sold and not other drugs.
Would you be able to buy as much as possible at one time and where it is going to be sold, what kind of stores can say in their ads that marijuana is being sold here. Does a pharmacy have more right to sell it than the stores like grocery stores or your local newsstand? Would the U.S. allow import of marijuana into the U.S. and who will regulate the quality of it? And the biggest question is have we really lost the war on drugs or just the appetite to wage a war. What happened to the slogan “Say no to drugs”.

Pot also called marijuana (also called weed, grass and any of the other names that you can come up with) is the drug of choice for mild drug addicts (yes that is what I am saying here). Never tried, never will and don’t have curiosity or inclination to do but what brought me to this topic was the recreational use of Marijuana initiated in one state of the United States-Colorado. Well not everybody will agree with me and especially the people who have their loved ones sick and they need to take it for the medicinal purposes and surely I would not be a very popular guy who take it occasionally to get high since they believe that it is useless to make it a crime because everybody is almost doing it and it is just like it was about time to make it legal.
And I am sure as hell no that since people are saying that the war of drugs is a failure we should if not beat them then join them and now the no less than the President of the United States is saying that it is no more lethal than alcohol and even one former President has even said that he tried it but did not like it. What does this all mean in terms of legalization? It sure looks like that after gay marriage, there is an attempt to make marijuana legal and public policy is being created to make that happen slowly and surely.

If you see around you and around the world, you will see lots of clusters where you will find similar things in one place that you don’t need to venture further. The wall street area in New York, Hollywood in California, Silicon Valley in California, the financial district in London, the textile industry in Bangladesh, and lots of other places where you will find talent moving into that area since it is easy to find and change jobs and the industry can innovate faster with all the technology nearby. There was a study not too long ago which stated that innovation is faster if you have the technology and the skilled workers nearby since you don’t have to look for them in other places and waste your time and thus advance more as far as the employees are concerned. I believe it is the same thing as I have mentioned above some of the examples of clusters of similarity in industry.
These and other clusters of similarity foster in individuals a safety and familiarity pattern for newly arrived immigrants who are strangers in a foreign land and in industries where they can easily reach out to skilled employees not too far from their work areas. As you know the biggest immigrant cluster in the world is of the Chinese and in almost all the advanced and not so advanced countries, you will always find Chinatown and sometimes it is the favorite place of the tourists to visit since they have so much to offer. As long as people migrate to different countries and industries try to consolidate in a certain geographic area, you will always find these clusters of similarity.

Friday, January 24, 2014

I had never had any kind of problems with people of other kinds, it is the people who you think you know well because they are from your own background that causes problem when living in the same vicinity because they think that you need to be guided, criticized, back stabbing and talked about and it is their right because they are from your kind. As far as raising your kids the way you were raised and instilling them the values that you hold dear, you can still do it without being clustered or situated in an area of your own kind. And this is exactly what I have been doing. It is your will and determination and how well you can withstand the pressure of not being within your kind that counts. I am not saying that people don’t live with their own kind because it is up to their own choice where they want to live and raise their kids but I don’t believe living among your own kind is any better than living apart unless you are in a hostile country with hostile majority who don’t want anything to do with your race and you are a nuisance to them.
Staying in a place where you have similar types of business that is actually helpful. You see one you have so many businesses in one place, there is a lot of competition (unless you have a pact that nobody is going to reduce the price of their similar product beyond a certain point) but it is also a stop shopping also where you can find that maybe one shop has a different variety or is out of stock, while the next may have something that the other store may not have. Another is that if manufacturers are clustered in one place, you can find a lot of talent gravitating to that place.

But I guess it may be due to the fact that people have not completely assimilated into the societies which they have migrated to or the native people have not completely accepted them into their communities. It is mostly a sense of safety as the expression says united we stand and divided we fall, but it is also a sense to preserve the way of life that the immigrants had in their native countries and sometimes instill that culture in their offspring. But being concentrated in one area does not do justice to the kids that are born in a society that they are more familiar with. If you keep on putting kids in a neighborhood just because you believe that your culture is superior to others, you are setting up yourself for disaster. I used to live in an ethnically mixed area a few years ago but then I moved in an area where the population is more than 96 percent white.
But do you believe I am afraid to be between all the people who are not like me and does not share my culture or religion or other things. Not at all, I lived in Muslims and Non Muslims countries and never lived among majority areas. I am just comfortable with that and even secretly likes it since the more you are into your own ethnicity, the more the good and the bad things crop up during your interactions. The good things are really good, it is the bad things that ruin your relationship. I am not even afraid that in case of emergency nobody of my own kind will come for my help.

You know I could have chosen a different name for this topic but I thought why not give my spin on it. If you have heard the expression "birds of a feather flock together" you would see where I am going with this. The expression that I have mentioned is about similar people staying together for a similar cause or in a similar neighborhood so that they either feel safe or feel familiarity with their surroundings. If you see or drive around certain neighborhoods you will find that most if not all the neighborhoods around have been designated as an ethnic or non ethnic areas. Sometimes they are called little Italy or Little Tokyo, India town or Korea town or a neighborhood where there are majority of minorities or of a certain race. And it is not only confined in the United States but all over the world wherever there are minorities, you will always find these clusters of similarity.
Why do people or businesses create these areas? For once people tend to gravitate towards a locality where they feel that the people of that area speak their language or are of particular religion or ethnicity and they would either feel safer or want to maintain ties to their homelands and raise their kids with multicultural identity. Seeing familiar faces that that you have seen all your lives makes you have a sense of belonging to that group. I don’t know about this but it must be human nature to stay with people of your own kind.

Tuesday, January 21, 2014

A very heartwarming movie about a playboy who gets stranded with a baby left by her mother at his doorstep and he has to take care of her and change his ways. Wonderful movie and a surprise ending which I was not expecting in the least. Highly Recommended

Machete is back (you have to see the first one in order to know the story) this time being recruited by the President of the U.S. to take down a billionaire hell bent on destroying the earth and making a new one in his image. Cartoonish violence and nothing much Recommended for Machete and action fans. Other stay away

Beautiful and exciting movie about the first piracy of an American ship on international waters in 2009 in two hundred years over two centuries. Excellent portrayal by Tom hanks as the captain. Must see. Highly Recommended

Sunday, January 19, 2014

What is self reflection, according to me it is to take stock of what you did all day to find out what you did right that day and what you did wrong and see if you can improve on it the next day to become a better person. I know that we do all sorts of things every day without thinking about the right and wrong but only after the fact and only when either confronted with it or have the time to think about it. But like you come to work every day and follow up on your pending work or just look at the work done, you try to find out if you have done the right way, self reflection works almost the same way. If you take stock of what you did right or wrong during the day and try to start another day with a fresh determination to do good and be a better person and citizen of society, you can singly try to change the life of yourself as well as the people around you.
Self reflection means if during the day, you lied, cheated, commit fraud, helped somebody in need, read a feel good story, stayed away from bad things etc. Even some little stuff you did sometime during the day can be a motivator forever. You don’t have to go out of your way to do something, even little things can sometimes mean big to other people. Daily Self reflection is important because you already know what you have done during the day and you can easily remember it and not days after when you can have a sense of guilt that you did not remedy it right away when it was fresh in your memory. So self reflect it will make you feel good at the end.

My view of living near a mountain or mountainous retreat is a desire to have peace and quiet along with less traffic and just enjoy what is there in the wilderness so to speak. For me the beach is just water and you cannot explore very deep and you need a boat to do that too and if you are in the middle of nowhere but water everywhere that is really frightening. Other thing is that miles and miles of ocean in front of your house just gives me the impression that what if the area of water just decides to stand up and come crushing down your beach area like it happened in Hurricane Sandy. Well that is a bit harsh but nobody expected it to happen but it did and people are still reeling from the aftermath of it. Although you can get landslides on the mountains too, but it is just the allure to seeing wilderness beauty and long tracts of uninhibited land that draws me to it.
I don’t know about other people and many people will disagree with me but going to the mountains is very much a fun trip for me. I usually go the Adirondack mountain areas of New York, the largest state park in the United States and the breathtaking views and quiet winding down road is so much serene and captivating that words cannot explain. The beauty of waking up to fresh air and quietness with the birds chirping and sweeping views and no traffic to worry about is what draws me there. Maybe if you can see from my point of view then you would understand my logic but that is my living choice.

I was watching a show on TV before going to bed about people going to extreme lengths to stay away from civilization like they say living off the grid somewhat and I started thinking what kind of place you want to vacation or live in if you had a choice. There are most of the people who would rally love to live near the coast or beach or water body like a lake or a river but preferably a beach setting will be the ideal one. Some people like me would like live in a mountainous region with fresh air and great views of the mountains and wildlife and nothing else but nature which I call it living in isolation. But it is really not a complete isolation since I don’t want to be cut off from civilization because I will need some things in an emergency. Most of the people will avoid this as it gets colder during the night and there are no water views.
I am not going to put a case about living near the beach as enough has been written to support his narrative and don’t get me wrong, I love to beach too and would like to stay there but not permanently. It is nice to visit and stay for a few days and then move on. But here my point in saying that living in or near the mountain is the allure of being quietness away from all the hustle and bustle of the city life. You can also say that living near the beach is also the same thing but the noise of water hitting the land and sometimes worse like hitting your house and the gusty winds sometimes just rattle me.

Horror movie about a wedding party at an isolated house where three killers invade to kill all the guests not knowing that a guest has a secret talent to fight back. A different kind of movie with bloody special effects but very good. Recommended

The series continues as Riddick, the anti hero is stranded in a dry planet and has to fight against aliens and save his life in order to go back to his planet to save it from destruction. You really have to see other movies in the series in order to get a grip on this one as it is many years later than its predecessor. Recommended for action and nothing else.

An updated remake of the Stephen king novel of the same name about a girl with special powers who turns the table on her tormenters when she is humiliated publicly on her prom. Graphic violence and gory. An okay horror movie. Recommended with caution.

After that each contestant was asked to say their names and spell it loudly. And then the contest began. The organizers were using one of the more popular dictionaries to get their words to ask the contestants and one by one each name were called out and a line made and words were given and they had to be fist spoken, then spelt out and then spoken again so that everybody can understand. The nouns with capital letters first had to spell exactly the way they were written. And although some of the words were relatively difficult to spell while the pronunciation was different but it was appropriate for 4th and 5th graders. In the first few rounds not many kids were eliminated but as the competition heated up there seemed to be more pressure on kids to deliver. In between the rounds, several breaks were given to give some of the kids pause to drink water and go to the restroom.
As the kids who spelled a word wrong kept on getting eliminated, the excitement was building up with us as we never expected our daughter to go beyond a certain level and her turn kept on coming up faster as there were fewer kids remaining to compete and then the unthinkable happened and she was the last girl standing and won the top prize of a gift card worth 75.00 U.S. dollars. I could not believe and neither could my wife and my daughter, it was shocking that we did not expect her to win, just to compete and have some experience and she completely won the event over so many other contestant. We gave her a big hug and got ice cream for her later that night. The next stop is the regional next month, so stay tuned for that.

So last year my daughter decided to enter the town wide spelling bee contest. As I hate to get up early in the morning on Saturdays, it was really a chore at that time to go but my daughter finished fifth at that time not because she did not knew the word but because the person in question pronouncing it had a different accent and my daughter did not ask for either the definition and sentence relating to it. But this year she entered again and I said Oh Lord not another of those spelling bees. Well I found out well in advance that I had to go and reach there by 8.30 A.M. last Saturday but completely forgot the date just two days before and after sleeping late on Friday night and waking up early on Saturday,. my mood was not that great. I got coffee and then went to the high school where the spelling bee was supposed to be held.
It was raining light when we reach the auditorium of the high school and there were already all the kids that were supposed to take part in the spelling bee contest. Me and my wife were so sleepy and the place was very hot which the organizers promptly apologized but said that they cannot do anything about it. Any after sitting in row of vacant seats, the contestants were called on the stage and asked to sit down and the a whole range of rules were read out detailing that if any is breached then the contestant will be disqualified.

Friday, January 17, 2014

And when you meet an opponent you want to be nice to him/her but in your heart you may not like the person or even if you do you can’t since she/he is your competitor so when you see two candidates shaking hands it is for the cameras otherwise they would wish they were the only candidates. The shaking of the hands is also just a photo op, as the candidates harbor ill feelings towards each other notwithstanding the smiley faces. So being a politician is not my cup of tea or even if it was I would never be a good candidate because people don’t want to hear the truth. So it the same for the diplomat also, you don’t have to often lie about anything and they are not elected but selected but you still have to defend your countries policies in front of the host country.
And it is not even up to you where or when you are posted to a country in which you are unable to speak their language or you may not even like that country. And if you country does something then you are in the unenviable task to defend your country and sometimes it is the diplomat that are caught in the middle. And although you may represent your country but the host country and its people may not like you and they are just tolerating you because they have to have some relationship with your country. And for that I am also unsuitable for the position of a diplomat also. So now that I have ruled out my political and diplomatic career, I feel that I can relay what is on my mind through my blog and not be restricted by some superficial restraint or beholden to some unrealistic constituent.

Would you vote for such a politician who will curtail or eliminate certain benefits which most of the people (Democrat and Republicans) hold on to it? And the politician have not even been elected and he/she will be trampled mercilessly for even suggesting that since some of the benefits/entitlements/ programs are like the holy cow that it should not to touched, tinkered or even curtailed. Even talking about it would be shot down as fast as the words come out of the mouth of a candidate. It is just as hard for a candidate to say the right words and then measure up to that performance, because contrary to what people say they don’t want to hear anything which is taking money away from them or they are being asked to sacrifice a lot. That is why my chance at being a politician is like the weather although a permanent one being below zero.
You know in order to a politician the whole campaigning issue, the meeting with the people, smiling all the time (when you really don’t want to) going from one event to another plus smiling with your opponent and trying to get as much negative information about him/her is really not my cup of coffee so to speak. It has just to lie sometimes but if you are going to be lying even in your heart it is the truth then it is bad because you are lying not in front of two or three people but the whole world, by which I mean your event will be all over the internet, TV, radio, newspapers and all the media events and you will not be able to recover if the lie is way over the top and you have somehow have the knowledge of it.

That is the question I want to talk about since I write and maintain a blog and I have so much diversified opinion about so many issues that it is will be natural for me to run for office. Right? No absolutely wrong. It is because of this same reason that I cannot be a politician or a diplomat. As you know being a politician or a diplomat is not an easy job. Let’s start with a politician, even if you think that you will be speaking the truth about something, your advisers may think otherwise and may try to manipulate the wording so that you are halfway between truth and a lie. And since you need to get the votes you will try to do exactly that. You see a politician cannot or will not tell the truth as is since he/she would not be able to get the votes need to get elected. She/he has to lie a bit so that he can get away with it till he/she is elected and then you can claim innocence when your lie or half truth is discovered.
You know people want to elect angels as politician with no major or even mistakes throughout their lives but when their vulnerabilities come to surface then they say that they are either only human and we should forgive them for their past deeds or the politicians should resign because they lied to them. For example, what politician that you know would say that social security should be curtailed or the Medicaid or Medicare should be abolished and we should definitely reduce out defense budget?

Thursday, January 9, 2014

I surely know there are people out there who harbor dark secrets that they don’t want to reveal voluntarily or don’t want people to know about it. And the secrets can be of any time or place and would cause you embarrassment or you may suffer a loss due to it. And these secrets can be from the time you were little and did not know right from wrong and it could from the time you did know what is right or wrong but for that span of moment did it because it felt that it was the right thing to do or you were forced by circumstances. Even things which may seem innocent to you can in your infinite wisdom turn out to be major mistake or blunder if revealed in public or even to your family. Some time you may have lied long time ago and are afraid it will come out to haunt you if revealed and sometimes you just want to forget about your past and have already paid for your sins and wants to just move on.
Is it okay to hide your dark secrets? Maybe it is and it depends upon what are the contents of the dark secrets. Maybe the secret may not be as bad as you think or it may really have an impact on your job or family and you don’t want to bring it up. Every has done stupid things in their lives and you feel ashamed of what you did after the fact but as long as you have realized your mistakes and not committed again the same, it is not that relevant to bring open your secrets as the other people may not be that understanding (as if they are so much holier). So keep it is a secret if you are okay with it and no need to bring it up after years and years down the memory lane if you feel comfortable with yourself.

I guess you have listen to these words many times in your while attending a funeral, watching a movie or condoling with somebody for the loss of their loved ones. You will always hear this expression like he/she was a good person and sometimes had lots of trouble in life but now they are in a better place. So what is a better place? If they mean by heaven or some other place then they are right where there are no worries to go to work in the morning, get your performance update, take care of your families, pay your bills on time, worry about how to pay your bills, looking for a job, studying in a school, trying to stay out of trouble, maintain relationships with your relatives, neighbors, friends and the list goes on, but how do you know they are really in a better place? Is it really in your own mind or you have been told that it is so?
And since we don’t know anything about what happens when a person dies and goes into a grave, how do we know that person is really in a better place or a place worse than here. Not to offend anyone but we hope that the dead person is in a better place since it is hard to imagine or think that the person is going to a place far worse than here where you are unable to control your own destiny since you have already chosen your destiny in this world and just are awaiting results of your deeds (good and bad) in the hereafter (if you believe in it). So we can only imagine they are in a better place unless otherwise witnessed or informed otherwise.

Wednesday, January 8, 2014

For other natural disasters, you have been forewarned and have ample of time to escape even with a tsunami, at least you can run and have a safe place but with earth quakes if the whole place is shaking where are you going to go. I had that experience one time when I was sleeping at night in Lahore, Pakistan and the whole house started to shake and even getting down from the second floor was a struggle since the whole place was shaking violently and I was scared too much and that is when I realized that being in place where the earthquake can likely strike is indeed terrifying experience. And even if the shaking stops, you don’t know if it will not start shaking again. For other disasters, you can see that once it is done it is not going to come back but with earthquakes you cannot see if it had really stopped.
Although it is your choice when and of what kind of natural disasters you will face but for me Earthquake is the worst there is and I don’t want to be in one if I had my way.
I don’t know if you had other experiences and think that other disasters are life threatening but I am talking about in case something happens you don’t want to be in an earthquake situation since you cannot go anywhere because the whole earth is shaking and there is no shelter. Speaking of shelter, experts say that your best bet to stay safe in an earth quake is to stay out in the open so that you are safe but what if the land you are standing on is not safe then what?

So if you had a choice, what kind of natural disaster you want to be caught in where you can escape with your life. I have been in typhoon, hurricane, earth quakes, cold and heat but not the others mentioned above and I have seen on the television that each kind of disasters can cause. It is strictly my opinion that earth quakes are the only ones where I don’t want to be no matter which advanced country I am in. I mean every kind of natural disasters that I have witnessed have a warning system but for the earth quake there is none and you can stuck by it at any time and usually any place. Although when the earth quake is going to occur, you can observe the animals being restless and trying to run away from it but for the human beings, they have not yet developed any mechanism similar to other natural disasters which can alert people to run away before hand.
Although scientists have been studying fault lines under the earth to see which can move but they have been unable to yet determine at what time that would have. For examples sometimes they cite some area to say that they are way overdue for an earthquake which can be like several decades but they are unable to let us know why they are guessing it that way. But they don’t know what is due date because nobody has been able to precisely pinpoint where the next earthquake would be.

Before everybody jumps on to condemn my choice of words especially the ones who have happened to be caught up in one of the natural disasters, it is just my opinion and from experience. The purpose here is not to offend but give you some thought about what I am saying and then start thinking yourself. That is the purpose of all my articles is to make people think about things that they have not thought about it before. With that this topic as well as some coming topics this year will be difficult to read or makes some people angry and the purpose is to let people think that what they would want to do in cases where they are caught unaware. This topic was delayed to the Typhoon that struck the Philippines late last year since it would have been insensitive on my part to create an impression that one disaster is more severe than the other.
You know that every natural disaster creates casualties and I don’t want to wish upon any natural disaster on anyone but since we live on planet earth, I am sure everybody has experienced some sort of natural disasters in their lifetime. Be it a typhoon, hurricane, tornado, Tsunami, twisters, earth quakes, floods, lightning, bone chilling cold or scorching heat, you will ultimately face any one of them depending upon where you are living. And if unfortunately you are in their path, you will very rarely escape their path or if you do, you will sustain some sort of injury.

A naïve college student loses money on an online poker site and thinking that the site has duped him, follows its owner to Costa Rica where he gets involved with the site's owner and get seduced by wealth and greed. Okay movie, nothing special. Recommended with caution.

A cannibalistic family starts to get exposed when the wife dies on a rainy day and the rest of the family has to fend for themselves. Slow at start but ultimately starts getting interesting. The ending is not to be missed. Recommended with caution

Monday, January 6, 2014

The best way to avoid this kind of scam emails or phishing is to delete the email and contact your local bank where the email is supposedly originating and find out if they actually send the email or not. Or better yet this is what I do, I delete the email and instead of the calling the financial institution, I type in directly to the website name and then log on to see if it has been really suspended and if not (which most of the time it is not) I just leave it to that and move on. You don’t need to stress about it because if you start to get worked up on every scam you are targeted then you would waste a lot of time chasing things which should have been deleted immediately. Similarly people in some disaster or other financial situations get emails and mails all the time and they get warned also by the authorities and it is best to heed that advice.
Apart from using common sense when it is under your control, you will be scammed left and right and in the case of scams where the hackers target whole companies database and steal your identifies the thing to do is to change your credit card and look out for any fraudulent activities by logging on to your accounts at least once a week since waiting for the statement of your accounts after a month is a long time in this day and age when you can access your account 24 hours a day on the internet. And only vigilance on your part can make sure that you are not ever scammed.

Every time something tragic happens, scammers are out there with genius ways to get people part with their money. Usually if you are unemployed you will find many ads on the internet and newspapers stating that you can earn big bucks per hour while doing almost next to thing and this should already raise a red flag, but when you are desperate to get any job, anything you do in the comfort of your home seems better than actually applying for a job. The same goes for senior citizens who have been duped out of their hard earning savings in terms of millions of dollars. I use to get emails and still do sometimes from Nigerian sources that I have won some money and they need to wire that money to my account and they just need the account number and the related details. I am able to decipher that it is all a scam I delete the email immediately.
But some people have actually mailed the money to them without thinking about contacting their local authorities that if it is a scam or just consult somebody before they do that but money is a powerful and irresistible motivation and people's brain freeze when they hear that they can make unusually large amount of money for little of no effort. Another one of the scams which unfortunately I fell for long time ago and have not thankfully have not fallen to yet is the email that you may have seen stating that your account has been suspended and you may have to log in again to get access and they provide you the link. This is the ultimate scam because if you do then you will be led to a site which may look similar but may have been linked to some website outside the U.S. where they can get all your information and make copies of it and sell it at the black market.

I believe that most of the people in their lifetime have been scammed at least once. It may not have resulted in a monetary loss but you were somehow almost about to lose some money regarding some questionable deal that is too good to be true. And it is not that I have not been scammed, but due to my stupidity or ignorance at that time I fell for it and had to cancel my cards immediately when I found out and never went to that company again. It was also long time ago and I had just started using the internet so I guess you can say I did not do due diligence like calling the bank directly or the card company and fell for it. But nowadays there is so much information out there bewaring people not to fall for scams internet or otherwise and still people get scammed.
Usually it is the senior citizens who get scammed the most but you would find that people in desperate situations are also very vulnerable. If you are unemployed or desperate for money, you will most likely fall into scams which promise you work and huge amounts of money for little or useless work. It is all about the money and since human beings have to pay bills or just become a little greedy that is why when such so called opportunities arise, all the rationality and caution goes out of the window and you get trapped into letting somebody have your credit card number or social security number or just send some money in order to make more money and you know that you are duped when nobody replies to your email or your calls and you are just plain find yourself dumbfounded that why you did that thing.

All we know that Pakistani forces number around 90,000 soldiers surrendered to the Indian Forces around the fall of Dhaka on December 16, 1971 and this is all the history that is ever taught in the books of Pakistan Studies in schools. The only people get blamed are the Indians and the civilian government of that time. Nobody wants to dig up dead bodies and find out what is their fault. It is as if nothing happened and the government and also some influential people don’t want people of Pakistan to know what happened in the supposedly darkest hour of that country’s history. It is just shameful that half the country separated and most or even all of the new generation does not know who the culprit was or who did what and what kind of atrocities each side did to each other. Not even a glimmer of information has been officially put out by the government relating the news about the breakup of their country.
There was a report commissioned by the government long time ago about the causes that led to the separation of the country but it was shelved and only was surfaced when it was leaked on the internet. Some say that more than 3 million people were killed although some say only 200k to 300k killed. Irrespective of the number of killings, isn’t it time the government of Pakistan come out with the truth of this war instead of ignoring it. Both sides of the war committed atrocities and ignoring your own side while highlighting the others is not fair. It is now time for the government of Pakistan to tell the truth about what happened in 1971 war of independence of Bangladesh and if they did something wrong should apologize to the people of Bangladesh as they are also brothers in faith as claimed by Pakistan.

(Warning: Controversial topic. Reader discretion is advised).
I was also in the dark about what happened to one of the South Asia tragic war in 1971 which resulted in the formation of Bangladesh out of Pakistan. No history books have been clearly written about it and the curriculum being taught in Pakistan has never told the story let alone the partial story about how East Pakistan became Bangladesh. I was kept in the dark for a long time but since I never was in Pakistan when the so called war of independence was happening in East Pakistan but I still remember the news cast overseas where they were showing what was happening in East Pakistan. And still now generation after generation have been told that it was India that conspired with the Bangladeshis to separate the eastern part from the Western Part (the present Pakistan) without acknowledging their own complexity in the issue and even hiding it and saying that they were innocent in the creation of the debacle in East Pakistan.
Recently the head of the main Islamist party in Bangladesh was executed for this war crimes, although it was 40 years late, Pakistani Government came out with its condemnation of the execution stating that the person was executed due to his love of Pakistan and his support of a united Pakistan. No mention was ever said about his crime and what Pakistan did in that war and so again the world missed out as usual with what actually happened during the war, the causes, the reasons etc.

You may have noticed how each sex bashes the other and see their own as the superior one. For example men may say that all women do is to complain about how the men are deceitful and liars and cannot be trusted with mundane things. And on the other hand men treat the opposite sex as being greedy and suspicious and cannot be trusted either. But even if all the bashing goes on, they can’t live without each other. You have seen the shows on television, in movies and other media outlets about how the men and women try to outsmart each other and bash each other sexes to the fullest but then they still reconcile and find solace in the arms of each other. I know that some men and women act despicably towards each other and still the majority do sometimes bash each other during certain circumstances but that does not mean that all are bad.
I mean why to bash the sex and not the individual, I can understand that when somebody is hurt by the opposite sex for reasons like when you are in a relationship there is a tendency to bash the whole opposite sex for the sins or mistakes of an individual. But if you think about it rationally it is that individual that gave you grieve and you can also reflect upon yourself if were also not partly to blame and even if you feel you are innocent (which most of us do anyway), you can still not blame an entire gender for what has been done to you as an individual. So if you really want to bash the sexes just think if it is the individual who deserve it or the gender.

Unless you are doing something else exciting in your life to make your living you are doing the same routine work without any additional input in it. You are just being a robot that does the routine work and then go home to come back again the next day for the whole work week. Can you bring change in your life or would you be going the same routine? It just depends upon you, if you have a business, every day you can have change in your life because every day is a struggle and full of opportunities but if you are stuck in a job you are the mercy of rules and regulations of the company which you cannot deviate and have to adhere to and also depends upon the instructions of your boss. As I said before even if you are human being you feel you are acting like a robot doing the same routine work in anticipation of getting a paycheck.
How do you achieve change in your life when you cannot change your food timing or change your work routine? I can understand that everybody has to eat in order to survive so unless you are going to fast one day and eat the next or some radical idea like that there is only so much you can do like change the menu and the time or skip a meal. What about your work? How can you change the routine that are so accustomed to it that you can do it blindfolded? You cannot do anything about the routine but you can make the day go by during your lunch hour and also during the work day do something interesting or out of the ordinary, talk to people, your colleagues outside of work to see what interests them and what is interesting to you. Apart from owning your own business where every day is different there is not much you can do to change your routine other than do something not work related during your work time. And that can only be possible if you are creative enough to have change in your life and that is why I have my blog to thank for as it keeps on my toe all the time and my mind sharp for things to come up for the topics in my blog. You should also try to have changes in your life, be creative and then you would not feel bored.

Have you been bored in life? I know it is kind of a stupid question but the answer everybody knows that yes sometimes you get bored in life. Maybe it is because of you don’t have anything to do at a certain point in time or you are just doing something which you do as part of your routine daily life and it becomes boring. I am just saying here that you need constant change in your life, whether you want some different food every day or a different vacation every year or wear different clothes to go to your work, you need change in your life otherwise you feel bored and trapped doing the same thing over and over again. But there are certain things that you have to do over and over again unless you truly change it or sometimes you can’t. For example no matter what you try you have to eat breakfast, lunch and dinner.
You can change your menu and the time and the place but will not skip your breakfast, lunch and dinner. Maybe you will sometimes but then you are back to your old routine. You need to eat and you have been doing the same routine as well as your parents, grandparents and their parents and on and on. Same goes for your job, you go to work and usually most of the people work from 9 in the morning to 5 in the evening. It can change from before 9 to maybe after 5 sometimes but you are essentially doing the same work although the nature of the work you do can change but it is the same work with different issues involved.

I know that everybody has a wish list. It maybe a short wish list or a long one but everybody does have one. Like on Christmas and other festivities in other religions kids have their wish list that they want their parents and relatives to fulfill. And not only kids but even grownups have wish lists which are more expensive and sometimes take more time to fulfill. As you grow up your wish list also changes. Little kids like toys and big people like big toys but their wish list also includes wishes for their kids and their sibling kids and other wishes. Sometimes the wish list is just exclusively for them to know and they pray that GOD will grant them their wishes just not right away. Nowadays the biggest wish on your list must be winning big lottery jackpot so that you may be able to fulfill the little wishes that are on your list.
My wish list includes travelling around the world, seeing more countries, trying to be better human being, not curse too much (I am sometimes bad at that but not always), make a lot of money (don’t we all have that wish?), maybe have a startup in the future, but if only I can have lot of money I can fulfill nearly all my wishes which sometimes I don’t wish to mention in my blog (too personal for that). And sometimes your wishes does not come true and you regret later in life that if I could at least have that wish fulfilled than it would have been much better. But you know your wish list is never fulfilled because once you have fulfilled one wish another one crops up or you add it and you leave this world without ever completing your wish list.

Have you ever thought about if you are a book smart or a street smart, and what are the meanings of them? This thought came to my mind while talking to someone about some issue and I just blurted out that some people are book smart and some are street smart. A book smart person is the one who goes to college and gets a degree and knows stuff which are theoretical while a person who is street smart may or may not have much education but he/she knows how to navigate his daily life not on the basis of some hypothetical theory but because he/she is able to speak the language used on the streets and thus can utilize his/her street knowledge to deal with people and earn a living. Not everybody is bound to be a book smart person and not everybody can claim to be street smart person either.
It just have to a combination of two but you know even if you have the greatest knowledge in the world acquired through books, you may not be able to navigate your daily life if you don’t know how to apply that knowledge to every day usage. Although street smart can get you through some job in the office but the street smartness would get you through your life as most of the time you don’t deal with book stuff but everyday stuff and you meet with people who may not be up to your literary capabilities but they may be able to help you go through your everyday life simply and without applying complicated formulas and analogies. So in order to really survive in life try to be both.

Friday, January 3, 2014

Today is the fifth anniversary of my father’s passing away and leaving me permanently sad and devastated. I still remember the time coincidentally the same hour of today January 3, 2009 at 6.50 P.M when I came back from my office and was still on the computer when a call came from Pakistan. Not knowing what it was but just a routine call, I picked up and my elder sister told me that my DAD passed away and the story has ended. And from that time on, I kept on crying and crying, I spoke to my mother and I said that I will be there as soon as possible. Since it was Friday and I had to inform my office (since I was working as a temp) I could not just leave and not inform them. I had no visas and no airline tickets and hence on started I got both and was on my way on Tuesday to visit my dad.
Although five years have passed and I still feel his presence and during the past year I have seen him numerous times in my dreams and only one time he was old and all the other times he was young and talking to me. This is my only regret that I was unable to attend his funeral. But he is and will remain in my heart and I pray for his soul daily and Keep his memory alive with this post every year. I miss him so much and it is such a loss that nobody else can fill this void in my life. I wish I could see him again but that is not humanly possible. Even passing of so many years does not diminish his memories or his smile or his presence and it is hard for me to know that I can never see him again in this world. May he rest in peace and smile on his family as we keep on praying for his soul. I love you DAD.

Thursday, January 2, 2014

These were some of the major and minor events that happened in the previous year. Apart from my going to Chicago, we took a mini vacation to the south of New Jersey and saved a lot of money but enjoyed our min vacation nonetheless. And I believe that there maybe other events that I may have missed or overlooked or just did not consider it important enough in my view to merit attention like the ongoing violence in Iraq that is not letting up and have in fact increased due to the current civil war in Syria and also because the sectarian violence is being fueled by different countries funding for their own agenda. But it was a good year for me since I saw my mom after three years hiatus and it was good to see her. Work wise nothing was out of the ordinary as I did the same thing that I was doing in 2012 but thank GOD I still have a job.
Hopefully the New Year will bring new happiness, challenges and opportunities which we will all prevail and enjoy and keep ourselves and our loved ones safe and healthy. Apart from doing that, we should also be considerate of our neighbors and friends and the less fortunate ones and for this to happen, we will have to be a better person than we were last year. Professionally we should strive to grow more in our jobs and learn something new and not only one stuff but many things and it will not take that much time to learn because you can start small. So with this I welcome you to the year 2014.

An old Pope's surprise retirement ushered in an New Pope the first from South America who is now following a policy of inclusion and stirring up debate about issues around the Christian world. The birth of a royal baby in the United Kingdom to the son of Princess Diana was news that hit the headlines in 2013. The Syrian conflict is still going on with tons of refugees being created but it does not seem that there is any end in sight. The U.S. almost came to the brink of another war when it was reported that Syria used chemical weapons but after the promise of destruction of all chemical weapons by the Syrian regime, the war was averted. A devastating Typhoon in Philippines destroyed lives and property and an outpouring of aid from countries around the world. They are still trying to recover from this natural disaster.
The African Nation of Kenya was hit by a terrorist attack in the shape of some terrorists attacking a mall and laying siege to it before they were neutralized by the security forces there. It was shock that the whole Kenyan nation could not comprehend and it brought the war in Somalia closer to home in Kenya. And the military coup in Egypt eclipsed any news coming out of the Middle East. After a year of what I would call experimenting with a government they were surely not equipped to handle, the Military had enough of Islamist government of Muslim Brotherhood and ousted them from power and installed their own. Many of the people were happy but Islamists are not and the protests are still going on.

Another big event in the U.S. was the fiasco of the Healthcare.gov website which had a complete meltdown as people were unable to log on it and it crashed for a few days while the government scrambled to fix it. Although it is much better now but when it was in its disastrous stage, it was just embarrassing for the Obama Administration. One of my nieces’s got married in Chicago and I along with my family drove more than twelve hours each way to attend it from New Jersey. It was a straight fun drive which was although exhausting but not that bad. In the waning days of 2013, two bombs exploded in the Russian federation raising fears about the Winter Olympics which will be held there this year. The Elections in Pakistan was another milestone in that Country's history. It was the first time that a peaceful transition from one democratic government to another took place in that troubled country.
I will keep you posted on the situation in Pakistan as the drawdown of the U.S. and NATO forces in neighboring Afghanistan will definitely have an impact on that country's political and economic scene. The death of the South African Civil rights leader and President Nelson Mandela was a big news event last year since I have been hearing his name for a long time that this news which was long time coming because he was in and out of the hospital many times was not a surprise but still was a big event for South Africa in particular and the world in general.

As we have entered the New Year 2014, as is my custom, I go back to review what important and not so important things happened during the previous year. It will be in no particular order or importance and will be a mix of domestic and international events. If you have missed some of the news, you can catch up to it here. So here it goes like this there was a much hoopla over the NSA leaks as one individual working for the National Security Agency (NSA) of the U.S, released documents stating that the government was spying everywhere around the world. The leaks are still going on but after much hue and cry everybody has been resigned to the fact that it is not only the U.S. but other countries do spy on their citizens and other countries, it is only that the U.S. has far more reaching technology to snoop around but everybody does it in the name of national security but few acknowledge it.
Then there was the Boston bombings at the Boston marathon last year after a relatively long stretch of any terrorist activity in the U.S. since September 11, 2001, this bombing jolted the whole nation and one of the two surviving bombers sparked an intense manhunt and a complete lockdown of the Boston area till he was found alive and wounded. He was as usual a misguided Muslim who thought that by doing this he will garner favor with the public but instead it disgusted people and again Muslims got targeted due to this loser.

Another year have passed and we are in the year 2014, in a separate article I will describe the main events of the year 2013 but in the post I just wanted to wish my readers a very Happy and Prosperous year ahead as I continue to write about interesting topics and I am not sure right now but if I write something on some controversial or adult related topic, I will post a warning so that people can decide for themselves if they want to go ahead and read it. Please note that your comments are highly appreciated and welcomed and if I get financial support for my blog then it is surety that I will surpass my goal of last year which was the best I had since I started my blog four years ago. I was able to reach my target of 2000 articles and even surpassed it by more than 80 articles which I am proud of.
So for my New Year tasks regarding my blog, I want to have more hits and for that I need your help as you can definitely spread the word around and send articles from my blogs to your friends, relatives, colleagues and others. And financial support in the shape of donations would certainly be welcome as that will determine if I can reach another milestone in my blogging that to reach the goal of 3000 articles by the end of this year which I believe is a tall order but again if financial support is available I will be able to definitely reach it. So thank you once again for your support in reading my blog and I hope to keep on entertaining you in the year ahead.

Do you ever have selective amnesia and what it is that causes it. Let me explain everybody has selective amnesia that is the beauty of being a human being. People do it not out of some disease but because they want to suppress some bad part of their life history or because they want to hide something or don’t want to remember what happened in order not to offend some family member or other people. Even when you are at work and you does something wrong, you can claim your own selective amnesia because people may not want to get into trouble by claiming to know something when they can escape with have not remembering it. Amnesia is forgetting things or just not remembering it due to some trauma, or accident that may have happened that was so tragic that you can't seem to remember it under normal circumstances.
But with selective amnesia anybody with a normal healthy life can claim that they did not remember something and that is the end of the story even kids can claim that and get away with mischievous acts. Unless you have some solid evidence that the person in question did that particular act, you can in no way prove that he/she is not claiming selective amnesia and getting away with it. I mean selective amnesia is a very good defense in case you have done something wrong or don’t want to remember intentionally and you will find these examples every day of your life. So more power to selective amnesia.